This HDAD+ package contains two discs, one is a two-sided DVD-10 containing two channel 24 bit/192 kHz data and three-channel 24 bit/96 kHz data on one side, playable on DVD Audio players, and on the other side two channel 24 bit 96 kHz data and three channel Dolby AC-3, playable on DVD video players. The second disc included is a standard two-channel CD containing 16 bit/44.1 kHz data playable on all CD and DVD players. Transferred directly from the original 35mm three-track film by Bernie Grundman from Bernie Grundman Mastering and Len Horowitz from History of Recorded Sound at Bernie Grundman Mastering, Hollywood.

This Goossens/LSO recording by Bert Whyte for Everest at Walthamstow Assembly Hall in London was originally released in February 1960. As the liner notes point out, "Stravinsky has painted these Pictures of Pagan Russia, as he subtitled the work, with bold strokes on a huge orchestral canvas" which has never been more evident sonically than on this recording and the 35mm sound which has a textural richness that is more realistic than any other tape format.

Remastered - Golden Age Recording/Performance

posted on 01/17/20095 StarsReviewer: drdanfee

This reading has been a fav since vinyl LP. Then regular CD when it was coupled with Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances. Now it is yet again brilliantly remastered, CD plus HighRes DVD Audio. Just playing the red book CD back on headphones right now shows how much it has been cleaned up. Wow. Goossens and LSO take it slower than comparable virtuoso readings, and thus to my ears the reading is more brutally or primitively apt to the subject. Pricey? Yes. But probably worth it, sonically and as an exemplar reading. Makes me want to strongly investigate other releases in this series which promise similar sonic and performance values. Like the early test stereo Reiner-Chicago recording of Richard Strauss Also sprach Z., this series has yet to be bested in some ways, even given strong technical and musical advances in the time since first canned. Highly recommended.